Track lingo

So my oldest daughter has been doing this Track thing starting on three years now and I've grown to love it!

I liked all of my girls' elementary track meets when they were little but when junior high started and there were legitimate track meets with actual competition, I started to really to get into it. Now of course, the weather is a booger some days and the sitting for hours on end in steel bleachers can be quite a pain on one's backside but I still enjoy the season.

However, after 3 years, you'd think I'd finally figured out all the track lingo but yet every night after track practice, I have that blank stare on my face when my girls get to talking track. I ask my oldest daughter, "How was practice?"

My daughter then responds with a string of words that make absolutely no sense to me. She could be describing basket weaving for all I know when she carries on about running eleven 200's and pre-meets and so on.

All I do know is that she's exhausted and basically falls into the front seat every day. So when she describes her afternoon to me using word combinations I don't recognize, I just nod my head and say, "Wow! Sounds tough!" or "Oh really, how'd that go?" or whatever I need to say to make it sound like I truly understand what she just experienced.

Now that my middle daughter is in junior high, you'd think I'd have a rolodex of track words that I would recognize but nope. I ask her the same question every day after practice, "How was track?" She also responds, after barely flopping her tired body into the backseat, using terms like ladders and poles and the Oregon Trail. Obviously, I'm thinking actual ladders and your average pole in the ground and the historic story of the Oregon Trail, nothing remotely close to the sport of track.

So once again, I have no idea what she's referring to. But, like her sister, I just give her my most compassionate look and offer my sympathy for her exhaustion, explaining that there's no way I could do what she's doing and survive.

The meets are a different story. Before the meets, my daughter will tell me what she's running in and after this much time the only events I'm absolutely sure what they are is the 800 and the 4x4 relay. If she throws in the numbers 1600 meter or 3200 meter, then my brain has to shift gears and the calculations begin which causes that blank stare on my face that I mentioned earlier. I know this is elementary math and any doofus could figure it out, but for some reason, I can't seem to get it until she's actually running and I see her run 2 times instead of 1 or 4 times instead of 2, and by the next meet I forget it all.

I know I make it much harder than it is but it's a sport I'm still figuring out and even after 3 years, I just found out last weekend that there are more than one kind of spikes ... AND different sizes of spikes. I don't know what a supergirl stretch versus a cat dog stretch is or if for certain they're stretches? I'm pretty sure when they say Carioca, they don't mean Karaoke although that's what I picture of course, and I didn't know when you're practicing and running in lane 1 and someone yells "track", that means "MOVE!"

If I was running and someone yelled "track" behind me, I would yell back, "Yes, that's what I'm doing. Running on the track. Thank you!"

I guess I'm a work in progress and by the time my youngest daughter graduates, maybe I'll know all the ins and outs but for now, you'll have to forgive me for not be on top of all this track lingo!